Chapter 12

Early the next morning the boys were clamoring to get started, but their mother would not let them go into the control room.

“Now you listen to Mother,” she protested, using a favorite phrase of hers. “Your father hasn’t made any sign yet. You wait until he’s awake and has had something to eat. I know how anxious you are to do all these things, but you must remember he isn’t strong yet, and we must not let him overdo. He is as much a child about such things as you two are, but someone has to watch him.”

The boys laughed rather shamefacedly. “It’s just we get so interested in things, Mom,” Jon apologized.

“Yes, I know. But if you will look in your dictionary, you will find a word called ‘moderation.’” She smiled.

“Never heard of it.” Jon grinned as he went to get a reelbook on radioactives, and began studying. Jak, too, went back to studying and trying to classify the various specimens he had obtained from the two worlds. However, they soon remembered their usual duties--and whisked through their various chores about the ship, then went back to their absorbing occupations.

They had been at these nearly an hour when they heard their father’s voice. Dropping everything, they sprang toward the control room, and found him wide-awake and looking much better. Mrs. Carver came running in, and they were told, “Feel fine. This is a wonderful bed. Seem to be much stronger today, too.”

“That’s wonderful, Mr. C. I’ll go get you some breakfast.”

Jon ran for a basin of water and towels, and he and Jak helped their father with his toilet.

“While you’re eating, Pop, how about me cutting off that piece of the new metal so we can start studying it?”

“How big a piece were you figuring on?” Mr. Carver asked with that quizzical look.

Jon flushed and mentally changed the size he had planned to get. “About a gram?” he asked.

“I’d say more like a few milligrams.” His father grinned. “That’s plenty for our initial studies and analyses, and shouldn’t hurt us any if we’re careful and wear insulation.”

“But that’s only a pin-head size.”

“Well?” again quizzically.

Jon flushed once more. “Yes, that’s big enough to test, I realize now.

It’s a good thing I waited for you to help me. I’d probably have burned myself but bad. Actually,” he smiled now, “I was figuring on about a quarter of a pellet.”

His father frowned. “You should have known better than that, Jon. I thought I’d taught you something about being careful, and the dangers of rashness or impulsiveness. Especially around anything as dangerous as this stuff undoubtedly is.”

“You did, sir, and I’m sorry. But I forget sometimes, when I get too enthusiastic.”

“Well,” philosophically, “you’ll probably learn as you grow older ... if you live that long!” But again there was that disarming grin, which Jon repaid in kind before leaving to get his tools and go after the mite of new metal. This time, he did not neglect his precautions. He wore his suit, and put on a pair of extra-thick, lead-impregnated gloves.

Carefully he lifted a pellet from the box, wrapped it in several layers of lead foil left after making the box. He carried it so into the storeroom, locked it in a vice, and with a fine hacksaw cut off a tiny bit. Still wrapped carefully in the lead foil, he carried the remainder of the pellet back to the box in the lock, closed the lid and then took the sample inside. He took off his suit and donned a lead-impregnated, hooded gown and the leaded gloves.

“Good,” his father said when Jon told what he had done. “I think I feel well enough to sit up a bit. Suppose you crank this seat halfway up, then I can watch better while you make the tests.”

“Just be sure you don’t get too tired,” Jon said solicitously as he raised the seat and locked it at half-recline. He had brought in another of the leaded-gowns, and he slipped this over his father’s head, arms and upper torso, arranging the balance of it down over his blanket-enwrapped legs.

Then, acting on his father’s various instructions, he took the particle from its wrappings and began his tests. He measured the amount of radioactivity, and together they computed its half-life.

“Wow! That sure is high-pressure stuff,” Jon exclaimed when they had completed the various tests which they had the equipment to make.

His father silently motioned him to set the seat back to full recline and lay there, concentrating, for some time before he spoke.

“Yes,” he said at last, “it’s even higher in the scale than I thought.

Lots higher than Curium, even now. And no telling, by any tests we can make, what it was originally, before its many half-life reductions that must have taken place over the long time it has undoubtedly been lying out there. Probably way above anything known, even theoretically, to Terran scientists.”

“Can we use it?” Jon was quivering with excitement.

“If we can figure out a way to do so safely, so it doesn’t want to disintegrate all at once, I think we’ve really got a fuel--a super fuel. But we’ll have to go at it mighty slow and easy. That stuff could blow us higher than up, if used wrongly.”

“Yes, I know. But after our scientists first liberated atomic energy for their bombs, many people said they couldn’t control a hydrogen bomb, but they did. And later the thorium bomb. And then they got our activated copper. So I’m betting they can figure this out.”

Both fell silent, although there were a dozen eager questions the boy wanted so much to ask. But he did not interrupt his father’s line of thought, even though long, long minutes dragged away while the elder still pondered the problem.

At last, after more than a quarter of an hour, Tad Carver stirred and looked up. “This is going to take a long time to figure out,” he said slowly. “I’m not too much on atomics, myself, and neither are you. Now you run along and do whatever else you have to do. It’s a cinch we won’t be able to try this stuff right away--if we try it at all.”

The disappointment on Jon’s face was plain, but he restrained any protests, knowing his father was right, and not wishing to call down on himself another verbal chastisement like that recent one.

“What about the rest of the stuff?” he asked instead. “Shall I get the box out of the cache and weld it onto the hull, as we thought we might do?”

“I don’t see why not. We want to take it back to Terra with us, whether we figure out how to use it, or decide the job’s too big for us and turn it over to the scientists there to handle.”

“Right.” Jon went over to the controls of the handling arms in the lock. Watching in the special visiplate, he opened the outer lockdoor, extended the “hands” and guided them down into the cache, after using them to lift the lid off the larger pit-box.

Carefully he manipulated them to grasp the inner box by its lower end-edges, and experimentally lift it an inch or so. Finding that it balanced, he slowly made the servo-mechanism lift the heavy container from its ages old resting place and up onto the “top” surface of the ship, near the stern. Making sure it was securely held there, he put on his suit, gathered up his welding outfit, and went outside and climbed onto the hull.

Going to where the box rested, he began the task of welding its bottom back-edge onto the metal hull. Then he released the grip of the handlers and, leaving them dangling in the air, welded the other three bottom edges.

Finished, he turned off his torch, rose to his feet and started back.

But after a step or two he stopped and thought.

“Pop,” he said into his suit-radio, “do you hear me?”

“Yes, Jon,” the answer came back at once into his earphones. “What is it?”

“I was just wondering if it wouldn’t be a good idea to spot-weld a few places along the edges of the cover, too, so there’d be less chances of its coming open. It’d be easy to open it later.”

“How’s it fastened now?”

“Just a simple hasp.”

“Better touch it in a few places, then, to make sure.”

“Right.”

When this was done, Jon returned inside the ship, and saw to it that all the equipment was put back in place and carefully locked. Only then did he doff his suit and return to the control room.

“Well, that’s done. What now?”

“Anything else you need to do here on this planet?”

“No-o-o, not that I know of. Why?”

“I was thinking that if everything has been taken care of, we might as well start back to Terra. No use staying any longer than is necessary.”

“I ... I think we’ve done everything. Have you checked the record book and the pictures?”

“No, not fully. And I probably should, before we take off, at that. But I think I’d better have another nap or rest now, so I’ll go over them after a while. Put them on the table here, so I can reach them.”

“Right, sir. You take plenty of time to rest. If Jak’s not too busy to go with me, I think I’ll go fishing in the river, out there by the edge of the desert. Maybe we can get quite a haul to take with us, for fresh food on the trip.”

“Good idea. Your mother said they were delicious.”

When the two boys returned with full creels late that afternoon, they went at once to see how their father was getting along. He was awake, and studying the records they had made.

“Hi, fellows! Everything seems to be in fine shape. You chaps certainly did a job while I was non compos. Get any fish?”

“Lots of them. They sure bite swell here. Maybe because no one has ever fished them before, and they have no idea of lures and hooks.”

“Then let’s just rest and eat and sleep, and plan to take off in the morning, eh?”

“You bet. I’ll sure be glad to get back home again,” Jak declared.

“This chasing around is fun, but I’m homesick for Terra, I guess.”

“Me, too, kind of. Besides, I want to get some more schooling at one of our atomic institutes,” Jon added more slowly.

“Going to give up inter-stellar exploration, Son?” his father asked drily.

“No, sir. But I figured we’d have to stay on Terra for a year or so while you get everything straightened out about this discovery, and get the ship ready for the next trip. So while you’re doing that, I might as well be trying to learn something more.”

“We will, and you should. And I presume,” he turned to face Jak, “you want to study medicine?”

“That, and other things,” the elder boy responded soberly. “If we can afford it, sir, I’d like to get several top men in various branches to give me some special coaching, instead of going to a school. That would get me started straight, and they could recommend good books for me to be studying while we’re on our future trips.”

Their father looked up at his wife with a smile. “What’s happened to our babies, Marci?”

“They’ve just grown up, Mr. C.--but we have some pretty wonderful men in their place.” Her eyes shone. “It was pretty hard, at first, after you got hurt and they had to take charge of everything, to realize that they had grown away from us. But I soon found that they hadn’t, really,” she continued hastily as the boys gave cries of dismay. “They have matured wonderfully, but we have not lost our boys at all.”

“Well I should say not!” Jak cried hotly.

“We’re still kids, not men,” Jon declared. “Why, there’s still so much to learn--and experience to gain--we’ve barely started growing up.”